


Prompt: Recruiting.

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [69]
Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Not CACW Compliant, Not Canon Compliant, i think is the best tag for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:51:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6709348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam doesn’t move until Lang seems to spot him, rising and striding over to him where he stands by the gate, the small girl’s hand in his. </p><p>“Wingsuit,” Lang says.</p><p>“Tictac,” Sam replies. </p><p>The girl looks between both of them, eyes narrowed slightly with focus, before looking back to her dad. </p><p>“Y’know,” Lang says. “I’d rather you <i>not</i> track me down when I’m trying to spend quality time with my daughter.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prompt: Recruiting.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt readable on my tumblr [Here](http://essayofthoughts.tumblr.com/post/143665648925/whoops-i-lied-i-found-the-other-two-prompts-i-had).

**i.**  
The twins don’t know Sam that well, so when he asks them to accompany him on a Field-Trip/Possible-Recruitment trip they aren’t entirely sure _why_.

“Others are busy,” Sam says, shrugging when they ask. “I’d ask Clint or Vision, but Vision may freak them out, kinda, being purple-”

“Maroon,” Wanda corrects.

“Maroon, fine. And Clint has his new kid to take care of and wants to stay retired. So. You two.”

Pietro is rocking back on his heels in the way Wanda knows means he’s at least curious, and there are brief fragments of very _interesting_  memories making their way across the surface of Sam’s mind.

“Please?” Sam says. “It’d be good to have company.”

Wanda sees the memory of a tictac sized man knocking Sam over and grins. “All right,” she says. “But if you fight, we will only watch.”

 

* * *

 

 **ii.**  
The trip turns out to be to a park - “Neutral ground,” Sam says - and they spend a few minutes standing about before Pietro, bored, starts playing on the monkey bars. 

“Pietro!” Wanda calls. “Those are for _children_!”

Pietro only laughs. “No children are using them!”

This is true enough; the park is rather empty, and what children there are seem to be quite content with swings and slides and running back and forth between friends and family. Wanda remembers the few parks in Novi Grad, none in the greatest of shape, but does remember how Pietro would always make the most of them. He is like a child again, swinging from the monkey bars, and clambering up the climbing frame, and there’s something calming in seeing him happy. They have neither of them had much of that.

“So,” she asks Sam, “Why are we here?”

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
There is, Sam explains, a man who is capable of shrinking to the size of a tictac (despite Sam’s momentary pause as though to explain what they are Wanda _does_  know what tictacs are. She prefers the mint ones and the cinnamon to the orange-and-lime, but will eat whatever kind she is given, provided Pietro doesn’t steal them). Sam has, with some effort, managed to track down this man - one Scott Lang, ex-thief, apparently - and learned that, some weekends, he comes to this park with his daughter.

“It took him some negotiation apparently, as his ex-wife’s new husband is police,” Sam says. “But somehow they’ve sorted things to a point where James Paxton doesn’t think he’s a good-for-nothing thief.”

Wanda shrugs. “People thieve for many reasons. Pietro and I stole to survive, when we were on the streets.”

Sam is silent, and when Wanda skims over his mind she sees snaking shades of grey worry beneath the wings of his mind. “Do not worry,” she says. “Some thieves do not do it for good reasons, we know that.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, slightly awkwardly. “Anyway, Scott Lang at least seems to have tried to turn over a new leaf.”

“By becoming an ant.”

Sam grins. “Well,” he says. “We can’t all have wings, superspeed, or super-powered scarlet stuff, can we?”

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
Wanda knows when Sam spots Lang, even before he says. He stiffens slightly in his seat beside her, and Wanda tugs lightly on the bond to her brother’s mind, to remind him to be alert. Pietro settles into a vantage point at the top of the climbing frame, sitting on the topmost wall, legs kicking against bright orange plastic. 

 _Which one is it?_  he sends to Wanda. Wanda offers the mental equivalent of a shrug.

 _Watch Sam_ , she suggests. _He’s the one who decided on all this_.

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
Sam doesn’t move until Lang seems to spot him, rising and striding over to him where he stands by the gate, the small girl’s hand in his. 

“Wingsuit,” Lang says.

“Tictac,” Sam replies. 

The girl looks between both of them, eyes narrowed slightly with focus, before looking back to her dad. 

“Y’know,” Lang says. “I’d rather you _not_  track me down when I’m trying to spend quality time with my daughter.”

Sam shrugs one shoulder. “You’re not the easiest to track down otherwise.”

 _Intervention time_ , Wanda sends to Pietro from where she stands a little behind Sam, her arms crossed.

“I am Wanda,” she says, stepping forward, offering her hand. “Sam dragged me and my brother along. You are?”

Scott pauses, glances around until he spots the blur that is Pietro hurtling to a halt at Wanda’s shoulder. “Scott Lang,” he says, shaking her hand slowly. “This is Cassie,” he says, also slowly, gesturing to the girl. 

Wanda smiles, half-turns to Pietro. “My brother,” she says, “Pietro. Now we are all introduced, maybe we could talk without insults?”

 

* * *

 

 **vi.**  
Sam and Scott devolve rapidly to bickering anyway, somehow managing to balance snarking at each other about a fight that the twins apparently missed and discussing whether or not Scott is interested in joining the team. Cassie, still holding her dad’s hand, seems more than a little bored as Pietro crouches before her.

“Ah, stuff them,” Pietro says, waving his hand in the general direction of Sam and Scott. “Let the adults talk. Do you want to go on the swings?”

Cassie looks at Pietro, apparently assessing him, from strange hair to well-worn but still-new trainers, before tugging on Scott’s hand. “Daddy,” she says. “I’m going to go on the swings.”

The glance from Scott to Cassie and then the twins is wide-eyed and half-worried and Wanda offers as reassuring a smile as she can. “We will watch her for you. She will come to no harm while we are here.”

Scott still looks wary, but nods slowly when Cassie looks at him pleadingly. “All right,” he says. “But don’t go out of sight, ok Peanut?”

Cassie’s grin is wide as she hugs her dad before hopping off the bench. “Ok, daddy!”

The twins both smile at how Cassie considers Pietro’s offered hand before shaking her head and refusing it with all of the regality of a seven year old. 

“Do you like the swings then?” Pietro asks as they walk over. “How high can you swing on them?”

Wanda knows Pietro is perfectly capable of talking to children - it was he who had found Andrej in the first foster home, and befriended him, and he, more often than not, who had directed the lost children of the streets to where Wanda could offer them better help - but it has been a long time since either of them have interacted with children, what with the castle, and like watching Pietro on the monkey swings watching him interact with young Cassie Lang is calming in its own way.

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
“Are you superheroes?” Cassie asks, as Wanda uses her scarlet to push her swing.

Wanda shrugs. “Sometimes. Usually we are just people.”

Cassie watches them with the oddly alert eyes some children have before nodding. “Like daddy.”

Pietro’s grin is almost teasing from where he’s hanging from the swing frame, his legs hooked over the bar. “Do you think he would want you to tell us that?”

Cassie shrugs. “Your friend knows. Don’t you know already?”

“We do,” Wanda admits. “But secret superheroes like to remain secret. You do not tell everyone it if it is secret.”

“But it isn’t,” Cassie points out. “You already know.”

“I like this one,” Pietro says to Wanda in Sokovian. “She is as smart as Lila.”

“Come down,” Wanda replies in the same language. “The blood is going to go to your head. You do not want to get dizzy.”

Pietro sticks his tongue out at her, childish as he is now at least free to be, unlike in the castle, and swings down. 

“So,” Pietro says, in English again. “What do you do when your father is being a superhero?”

 

* * *

 

 **viii.**  
Cassie, they learn, practices gymnastics, and leaps off her swing at the peak of it’s arc to show them, rolling as she lands and going quickly into a cartwheel. Pietro claps, Wanda smiles. 

“Very good,” Wanda says. “Maybe you should practice with Natasha. She could show you how to do things like that even on a climbing frame.”

“Do you do that?” Cassie asks, and Wanda shakes her head.

“That is not my... what is the word. Skillset.” She lifts a hand, twists scarlet into being, stretching like smoke and strands, and forming into a bright ball between two fingers. “I can move things with this. I can affect minds, too, but that is too dangerous to practice often.” 

“Scarlet Witch,” Cassie says in almost a whisper. “So you,” she says, pointing at Pietro who is methodically pulling up handfuls of grass and shredding it, “Are Quicksilver.”

Wanda smiles again. “Very good. You are very smart Cassie.”

Cassie looks at her warily. “ _Adults_ say that,” she says, with all of the judgement and scepticism of her age.

“Well,” Wanda says. “It is true.”

“Boooring,” Pietro chimes in. “Complimenting the child who does not believe it,” he says, sticking his tongue out at Cassie, pulling a face. “That is not interesting for anyone.”

“Well,” Cassie says. “What do you do that _is_  interesting?”

 

* * *

 

 **ix.**  
When Scott finally comes over to collect Cassie and leave, Sam following behind with a smile that leads Wanda to believe that Ant-man will be joining the Avengers at some point, they have had several conversations, jumping from topic to topic like a caffeinated rabbit.

“You OK, Peanut?” Scott asks, lifting his daughter up, though she wriggles free and takes his hand quickly enough. “Learn anything interesting while the Adults were talking?”

“Yes!” Cassie says, and Wanda thinks she can see shades of Scott’s snarking tendencies in her, albeit muted and made more into laughter. “Scarlet Witch plays guitar and Quicksilver likes to prank Iron Man!”

They can hear Scott laughing as he walks off, hand-in-hand with his daughter. “That,” he says, almost out of hearing, “I’d like to see.”

Wanda glances to Sam. “Is he on the team?”

“Probationary basis,” Sam replies. “If he can put up with you two he’s on board.”

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this please leave a comment!


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